Still True Today

Arutz-Sheva carried this article last year, but it is worth rereading for its applicability to the current situation with the "Road Map".

The Main Problem in the Middle East
by Jihad Renee Albanee
May 28, 2002

Many political personalities and leaders accuse the Israeli army and the State of Israel for all possible ills: Massacre of the Palestinian population, destruction of Palestinian cities, genocide, war crimes - a very long list.

It is evident that all those claims, some of which may be completely sincere, evince the claimants total ignorance of the main problem in the Middle East. I am going to sum up this problem in one sentence: The will of the non-Arab minorities in the Middle East to survive.

The two principal and largest minorities in the region are the Christians and the Jews. There are two states in which these two minorities still have their full human rights: Lebanon and Israel. In Egypt, the sole Christian who had the possibility to ascend to an important post was Boutros Boutros Ghali. He had been appointed by the former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat as delegate minister for foreign affairs, a post equivalent to that of a French cabinet chief, because Egyptian law forbids Christians from acceding to the posts of full ministers. In Iraq, the only Christian who fills an important post is the Catholic Tarek Aziz, Saddam Husseins long-time friend. In both above mentioned countries, and for that matter in all Arab countries, Christian rights are almost non-existent.

In 1975, Yasser Arafat and his cohorts waged their attack against Lebanon and particularly against the Christians. They hoped that within three weeks at the maximum, the Lebanese Christians would exile themselves to the United States, Europe, Australia and Canada, allowing Arafat to create an Islamic-Palestinian state in Lebanon. The road to Jerusalem passes through Jounieh, the Palestinian leaders were saying at that time. Jounieh is a Christian town situated to the north of Beirut, that is, in the opposite direction from Jerusalem. At present, Lebanon is laboring under the Syrian yoke, a fact to which the countries that defend human rights are totally indifferent.

Since the destruction of Lebanon and its occupation by the Arabs, the latter have decided to attack the second non-Arab country in the Middle East, namely Israel. Let us recall that Israel was created in 1948. The Arab countries rejected the partition of Palestine into two states, Jewish and Arab, and decided instead to throw the Jews into the sea (Nevertheless, a Palestinian state was founded, in Jordan. However, the Jordanian King regarded that state as his personal territory, though 70% of the population was Palestinian). From 1948 to 1967, the Arabs constantly preached the destruction of the State of Israel. During those years, the Jordanian King Hussein had made Jerusalem Judenrein (empty or cleansed of Jews), Jewish cemeteries were vandalized and destroyed, and some 58 synagogues were destroyed or turned into stables for Jordanian horses. It is ironic to note that during those 19 years, when Egypt ruled Gaza and Jordan ruled the West Bank, including eastern Jerusalem, no Arab country yearned to see the creation of a Palestinian state there. All that those Arab countries wanted was the destruction of the State of Israel. However, once Israel had conquered these territories and united Jerusalem, Arab countries started calling them "occupied territories," and, unable to destroy Israel directly, they began to call for the establishment of a Palestinian state on those territories. In addition, Egypt, in its aim to weaken Israel to better destroy it, requested at the Madrid conference the elimination of Israel's nuclear arsenal.

Naive Israeli personages were recruited in order to weaken the State of Israel. Among these, we will cite particularly former Prime Minister Ehud Barak. He believed that by withdrawing from southern Lebanon and by betraying his Lebanese allies, he would be able to achieve peace with the Arab people of the region. What happened, however, was just the opposite. The Israeli retreat from southern Lebanon was perceived by the Arab countries as a sign of Israel's weakness. A few short months following this retreat, Yasser Arafat gave orders to attack Israeli civilians under the cover of a Palestinian revolt - Intifadah. Weapons, financed by Iran, made their way to the PLO via Syria and occupied Lebanon. Iraq paid considerable sums of money to the families of terrorists who exploded themselves in Israel, killing Israelis.

Peace movements have always been activated when Israel was undergoing murderous attacks, in order to incriminate the Israeli population and leadership. This strategy had been used in Western Europe during the Cold War. The political parties, satellites of the Soviet Union, used to demonstrate all over Western Europe or manipulate associations, which would then demand the dismantling of American nuclear arsenals located in Western Europe as well as the departure of American troops from West Germany. Yet, the aim of these two requests had been to facilitate the invasion of Western Germany and adjacent countries by troops from the USSR.

The same method has been used for many years in Israel and against Israel for the purpose of weakening it, with a view to destroying it. Dozens of Internet sites were created to request Israeli leaders to quit southern Lebanon; huge demonstrations took place before and after the signature of the so-called peace accords between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin. All this was for one purpose only: The political and military weakening of Israel and the establishment on its very borders of a terror organization called the Palestinian Authority, whose sole objective is the destruction of Israel.

Despite the presence of a Palestinian State called Jordan, Israel has agreed to the creation of a second Palestinian state in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Yet, the Israelis have not relinquished their claim to a united Jerusalem that must remain the eternal capital of the State of Israel. However, regardless of this affinity for Jerusalem, Ehud Barak proposed to Arafat at the Camp David summit to surrender eastern Jerusalem in three stages. Yasser Arafat refused. Why? Because he does not believe in the co-existence of two neighboring states, one Palestinian and the other Jewish. History is repeating itself. Yasser Arafat had once settled in Lebanon and erected a state within a state before waging his murderous war against the Lebanese, the people who had welcomed him. Today, the same Arafat has decided to destroy the State of Israel. Regretfully, the Israelis have not learned anything from the past and have not understood that one doesn't let the wolf into the sheep pen.

Some imagine that such a Palestinian state, even were it to be established without threat to Israel, could survive on its own. They are wrong. The Palestinians are also subject to internal Islamic-Christian tensions. The Christians of this Palestine will have little choice: Either live without any rights, similar to the Christians in other Arab countries, or quit.

As for those in the West who believe that they'll make a political career by defending the Palestinians who live in Judea and Samaria, I would like to say to them: Before tackling problems that are beyond you, it would be more profitable to interest yourself in problems closer to your country and its honor. For instance, you might ask the French and American states to arrest the criminals who've ordered the murder of French and American citizens (civilian and military) in Lebanon. Here is a tip that might help you: In 1998, the Syrian Minister of Defense Mustapha Tlass announced publicly that it was he who, in 1983, had ordered the Hezbollah and other Moslem organizations to attack the barracks of American and French soldiers in Beirut (there were some 270 American soldiers and 85 French soldiers killed). This same minister, friend of France and the United States, had also announced that he refrained from authorizing an attack against Italian soldiers because he had a crush on Italian actress Gina Lolobrigida. How sad that neither France nor the United States had had a Lolobrigida of their own. She might have saved the lives of soldiers on a mission of peace.
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Jihad Renee Albanee is a senior official in the Guardians of the Cedars - National Lebanese Movement.